A personal reflection on what surrender means: letting go of control, people-pleasing, and judgment to live more authentically. The speaker got a tattoo of the word "surrender" as a symbol of this shift, and explains how releasing limiting beliefs can change how you age and move through the world.
Welcome to Fit for your Mind Friday where I share an insight from me to you. I turned 48 this week and I chose to do something a little crazy. At least for me, it was a little crazy. I got the word surrender tattooed on my right arm for my 48th birthday. And I'm actually shocked when I woke up this morning and I saw it again. I was like, I cannot believe I got this done. But I. But I wanted to share why. You see, I've been a control freak and a people pleaser and someone scared of judgment for years. Can you relate to that? Is that something that comes up for you? I'll say it again. Control freak, people pleaser, and someone scared of judgment. In fact, if you had asked me years ago if that was me, I would have said no. I think I was in denial. But looking back, that was totally me. Control freak, people pleaser, and someone scared of judgment from others. And this was for years. And I finally realized that, wow, this has really cost me living life to its fullest. And I've decided I've had enough of it. You see, control and people pleasing, they're illusions and they are hurting a lot of people's lives. If you think back to when we were children, there was a time, sometime in your childhood when you knew love, trust, possibility. Nothing felt out of reach. Anything seemed possible. And all we wanted and needed was to be authentically loved. Can you remember a time like that? We trusted, we were confident, we were happy, we were present. I look at kids sometimes playing at the park or at the beach, and I. And I see so much of that trust, confidence, happy, present. Not a care about anyone else's opinion, not a care about judgment, not trying to control any type of situation, just being present and living and having fun. And then you know what? Life happens. Life happens. We get let down. We learn not to trust people. We decide that things are too hard or not possible. Our dreams, we start analyzing them. We stop going for them sometimes. And then we have an ego that's born to protect us and keep us safe. And we feed that by staying really rigid in beliefs and validating that we're right, we're right, we're right. And control and limitations, they all set in and those cause stress. Stress takes over and we start creating pain as we get older and inflammation. And we age before our time. Now, what's wrong with control? It's not a real thing. You. I mean, you really can't ever control things. You can't ever control people. It's an illusion. It's something we think we can do, but we can't. And then what's wrong with limitations? Well, they become limiting beliefs. They become false, assumed truths, and they hold us back and they keep us stuck. We start analyzing our dreams, our goals, our vision, and we stop going for them. We've created limitations. And then stress. What's wrong with that? Well, stress, it creates inflammation, it creates disease, and it physically ages us. We can see when someone's stressed. We can see what that looks like. Now, when I speak into aging in reverse, which those of you that have followed me or listened to me for quite some time, you know I stand for aging in reverse. It is truly about surrendering to who you were born to be. A person who's loved, full of possibilities, authentic, trusting, living in your vision. That's surrendering. And it's when you get that, when you decide to surrender, that physical changes, financial changes, and love truly start to appear. It's when you start to surrender. When you surrender, you actually start to age in reverse. You see, aging in reverse is not about a physical appearance thing, but your appearance. It changes because you start to surrender. I love that word. I need that word. And I finally have embraced the word after years and years of fighting it. And I will remind myself to surrender versus control now daily, as it's clearly stamped on my arm for life. I literally tattooed it on my right arm so I won't forget this. I see it all the time now. Now, I get that you might not like tattoos, and maybe that's not for you. But I want you to know that I did it for me, not you. And I want you to do things for you, not others. And that's part of letting go of people pleasing and fear of judgment as well. Releasing those are also necessary to start age in reverse.
